As Democrats fight for information about the CIA's secret kidnap and torture
programme to be published in a landmark report, The Telegraph has learnt
details of America's requests to use British territory of Diego Garcia in
network of secret prison sites

The island territory of Diego Garcia, alleged to have been a refuelling point for CIA rendition flights, may have been a potential prison camp site in the War On TerrorPhoto: REUTERS

Tony Blair's government discussed a US request for permission to use the British territory of Diego Garcia to house a Guantanamo Bay-style prison camp for up to 500 terrorist detainees, the Telegraph has learnt.

Britain quickly rejected the Bush administration's idea on the grounds that the plan was impractical, but documents suggest the CIA may have still used the island to fly terror suspects to secret "black site" prisons around the world.

The fresh details of US desire to use Diego Garcia in its counter-terror operations emerge as Britain faces renewed questioning over its own support for highly controversial CIA programmes in the years after September 11.

The Foreign Office is now under growing pressure to come clean over whether it knowingly turned a blind eye to the illegal use of Diego Garcia for rendition flights and even the interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects on the island.

The US Senate was expected to release a report on Bush-era torture and rendition programmes last week, but the controversial document is back in limbo after senior Democrats criticised excessive censorship of the report and vowed to fight the redactions made by the CIA.

Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat chair of the Committee, has said it could now be "some time" until the report is made public.

The report, a declassified summary of an exhaustive 3,600-page classified document, could shed light on the extent to which Diego Garcia featured in US plans for secretly moving and housing suspected terrorists.

At the same time, a team of Scotland Yard detectives investigating the role of British security officials in the rendition of a Libyan Islamist in 2004, including a flight that may have touched down on Diego Garcia, is expected to send a report to the director of public prosecutions in the coming months.

Michael Blyth, the British head of security on Diego Garcia at the time of 9/11, told The Telegraph that he was asked in 2001 to investigate whether it was possible to house hundreds of prisoners from Afghanistan on the island.

"There was a discussion of whether or not Diego Garcia would be good as a transitory point for up to 500 prisoners of war coming out of Afghanistan," said Mr Blyth, a former Royal Marine now working in the risk consultancy industry in the US.

The plan was "quickly nixed", however, after Adam Peters, the senior British officer on the base, learned that proposals for a detention centre would need 300 guards, dogs and security cameras and were therefore impractical.

"The request came through the US Command in Japan," Commander Peters, now retired, told The Telegraph in a separate interview. "It was decided almost immediately that it was not even worth fully investigating and I communicated that to the US command and our government."

Both accounts support the official UK government position that the US was never explicitly given permission to use Diego Garcia as a staging point for its torture and detention programmes.

Separately, a security source with first-hand knowledge of US-UK intelligence relations in the period after 9/11 has also told The Telegraph that lawyers from the British and American governments did discuss the legality of using Diego Garcia in extraordinary rendition operations, but the British side again maintained that it was legally impossible.

The same intelligence source added that, as a result, the US never submitted any formal requests to use Diego Garcia for rendition operations after it was made very clear that such requests would be declined.

Among the most pressing cases still requiring explanation is that of Libyan Islamist Abdel-Hakim Belhadj and his pregnant wife Fatima Boudchar in March 2004, who were subjected to extraordinary rendition from Libya by the CIA in an operation aided by intelligence provided by MI6.

In 2011 top secret files relating to the Belhadj case recovered from the offices of Libyan intelligence after the fall of the Gaddafi regime showed "Diego Garcia" listed on the CIA's flight plan for the operation.

The Foreign Office has denied any rendition flights landed in Diego Garcia in 2004, but has declined to explain why the British territory, which is leased to the US for military purposes, was included in the plans if the US had been explicitly told that Diego Garcia was not to be used.

Lawyers for Mr Belhadj, whose case is currently subject to a High Court appeal, said the fact that Britain had discussed the possible uses of Diego Garcia in such detail raised real questions over whether the British government had simply turned a blind eye to America activities on the island.

"Did UK officials know about this?" asked Cori Crider of the legal charity Reprieve which is fighting Mr Belhadj's case. "Did they have to know, given all the high-level conversations about whether a more permanent prison on island was feasible, and then hide behind a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy?"

Both Mr Blyth, Mr Peters and the intelligence source conceded that the US could still have used the base as a stopping-off point for rendition flights without permission, although all said they had no direct knowledge of such flights.

"Could they have snuck through for a couple of hours with a prisoner in the back of a transport and without letting them out? Well maybe," admitted Mr Blyth.

"We didn't really inspect everything because they were military transports. But certainly if it happened it was done with a very light touch, because otherwise we would have noticed lots of people milling around."

Mr Peters, who was British commander on Diego Garcia from July 2001 to February 2003, agreed but said he was clear any rendition flights of the kind the US government admitted to in 2008 were unauthorised.

"I can't imagine the Americans would have asked, because they would have been told 'no'. The British government would not have been told about the whole thing. If it did happen, we did not know. I guess there were a couple of rendition flights. Well, so they snuck a couple through."

There were renewed demands for clarity over Diego Garcia last month after a foreign office minister said in a statement that Diego Garcia flight logs from 2002 were incomplete "due to water damage", feeding long-standing suspicions of a possible cover-up of UK involvement.

The following week, however, the government back-tracked, saying the damaged records had since "dried out" and all were now fully available for scrutiny.

It also emerged, after a Whitehall official was inadvertently photographed carrying sensitive documents, that the complete flight logs are now in the possession of Scotland Yard detectives investigating the UK involvement in the rendition of Mr Belhadj.

The existence of the flight logs appeared to contradict UK government assurances given in 2008 that a "thorough review" had found no such information.

It is unknown if a full cross-referencing of the contents against known CIA rendition aircraft has yielded new information, but pressure is now growing on ministers to release the files to avoid any further allegations of cover-up.